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Partition Screen

This memento screen is one of two screens that James Fenimore Cooper and his family decorated and used as remembrances after returning from a seven year sojourn to Europe in 1833. Family tradition holds that the Cooper children decorated this screen with letters, prints, notes, invitations, and calling cards collected in Europe, as well as Cooper family manuscripts. Among the letters on the screen are two from George Washington to William Cooper, as well as two from the Marquis de Lafayette to James Fenimore Cooper. The Coopers displayed the adorned screen in the library of their family home, Otsego Hall, in Cooperstown, New York.